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In Quake, Apotheosis of Premier ‘Grandpa’

CHENGDU, China — He is widely known as “the crying prime minister,” although he prefers to be called “Grandpa Wen.” Over the past week, as Wen Jiabao toured earthquake-shattered towns and cities across northern Sichuan, he has hollered out words of encouragement to those trapped beneath fallen buildings and shared tearful moments with newly orphaned children.

If a story widely circulated on the Internet is to be believed, Prime Minister Wen has been barking orders to army generals and dispatching paratroopers to remote towns hit hard in the quake, even though as China’s head of government operations he has no power over the military.

Since ascending to the post in 2003, Mr. Wen, 65, has cultivated an image as a man of the people, a rarity in the pantheon of Chinese leaders, who are often seen as placing stability and the authority of the Communist Party above the wants of individuals. The state news media have long labored to spread the notion that Mr. Wen cares for ordinary folks, broadcasting his visits with coal miners and migrant workers, and showing him eagerly shaking the hands of drug addicts and people with AIDS.

Now, as the nation grapples with its greatest natural disaster in three decades, Mr. Wen’s persona as an empathetic, benevolent official has been cemented in popular lore. He has become the public and inescapable face of a nation’s grief since he jumped on a government jet bound for Sichuan Province less than two hours after the earthquake struck.

His high-profile humanitarian gestures, played again and again on television, have stood in stark contrast to the response of the rulers of Myanmar, who have been widely denounced for inaction toward the victims of a devastating cyclone. But Mr. Wen also appears to have forged a new, media-savvy mold for Chinese leaders, who have long delegated propaganda work to lower-ranking officials and the state-run press.

“He really loves the common people, and we can see this is not an act,” said Wang Liangen, 72, a retired math teacher from the devastated city of Dujiangyan, who watched last week as the prime minister climbed over the wreckage of a school where hundreds of children were buried. “He has brought the people closer together, and brought the people closer to the government.”

Some analysts say Mr. Wen’s unusually public role may signal at least a modest shift in the way the Communist Party interacts with the Chinese citizenry. In a country where many millions live in poverty and thousands perish each year in mine accidents, for example, Mr. Wen ordered shortly after the quake that lives must be saved “at any cost.” And while Mr. Wen is not known to have supported any substantive political change during his first five-year term as prime minister, his frequent calls for more democratic-style consultation with ordinary people and for greater economic parity have resonated with the poor.

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Prime Minister Wen Jiabao in Sichuan Province last Wednesday, in a photo distributed by the official Chinese news agency.Credit
Yao Dawei/Xinhua, via Reuters

“Wen’s efforts will absolutely leave a long-lasting influence on government work in the future,” said Fang Ning, a political scientist at the China Academy of Social Science in Beijing. “His quick response and immediate appearance will set a precedent for other officials.”

It is difficult to know if the rescue effort Mr. Wen has led will ultimately be judged a success. And it is unlikely that the unusually vigorous press coverage of the quake and of Mr. Wen’s hands-on role in managing the rescue effort signal a shift away from strict censorship.

But Mr. Wen and his boss, President Hu Jintao, do seem inclined to show the world a kindler, gentler side of official China in advance of the Olympic Games. After the international backlash over China’s crackdown on ethnic Tibetans, the leaders have used the earthquake in an effort to show that their authoritarian government can be responsive, even populist, at crucial moments.

“I think the earthquake really has the potential to change things,” said Cheng Li, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, who argues that Mr. Wen — whose second appointed term expires in 2012 — is one of China’s brightest and most pragmatic modern leaders. Even before his actions in Sichuan, he said, Mr. Wen was a muscular champion for China’s have-nots, an advocate of broadening the use of legal norms to help govern the country, and a bulwark against party conservatives. “A lot of Chinese have been overwhelmed by Wen and his sincerity, honesty and humanity,” Dr. Li said. “Not many leaders have his qualities.”

Mr. Wen often talks about democracy but is not a proponent of Western-style democratic reforms. He remains an unwavering advocate of single-party rule, and he has taken a hard line on Tibet, accusing the Dalai Lama of instigating the ethnic Tibetan unrest in March. In public statements, he has said China is unafraid to use its military might to prevent Taiwan from declaring independence from the mainland.

Despite Mr. Wen’s well-tended image as an apolitical pragmatist, cynics note that he did not earn his lofty post by playing nice. “It takes a considerable amount of political skill and cunning to become premier of China,” said Fred Teiwes, a professor of Chinese politics at the University of Sydney in Australia.

Mr. Wen is nothing if not the consummate survivor. A lifelong technocrat, he made his way to the top of the heap by pleasing his superiors, hewing to the party line and making few enemies. A trained geologist who comes from a family of teachers, he is sometimes ridiculed for indecisiveness and for long-winded speeches flecked with quotations from Descartes and classical Chinese poetry. In the 1980s he served as a top aide to successive party bosses, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang; both leaders were purged after opposing harsh crackdowns on liberal forces in society, but Mr. Wen went on to serve in senior posts under their more conservative successors.

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Shi Shi Mo, 82, sitting in the ruins of his home in Sichuan Province on Tuesday. Mr. Wen has been expressing empathy for earthquake victims.Credit
Shiho Fukada for The New York Times

As with most Chinese leaders, much about him remains a mystery. But he presents himself as self-effacing and penurious. For more than a decade, he wore the same dull green overcoat. Unlike most of his fellow cadres, he refuses to tint his graying hair with gobs of black dye.

In contrast to Mr. Hu, an opaque and aloof statesman, Mr. Wen favors a colloquial speaking style, even if his comments always hew closely to the party script. Unlike his predecessor, Zhu Rongji, who was known for his jocular manner and snap decisions, Mr. Wen, when faced with tough economic policy choices, will often spend days ruminating and consulting before deferring to fellow members of the ruling Politburo Standing Committee for a collective decision, party officials have said.

“He may not be a good leader,” said Dr. Li, of Brookings, “but the perception out there is that he’s a good person.”

That has been the overwhelming impression since a somber-looking Mr. Wen announced news of the earthquake on May 12 as he flew from Beijing to Sichuan. In the days that followed, he was frequently shown hugging quake victims and promising government aid. According to people who saw him in those first few days, he cried more than once.

In recent days, a pro-government newspaper in Hong Kong and a Guangzhou-based Web site wrote that Mr. Wen had tripped and fallen as he walked on earthquake rubble and had refused medical treatment for a bloody arm.

A more intriguing account described his fury when he learned that rescuers from the People’s Liberation Army had yet to reach Wenchuan, a city of 100,000 at the quake’s epicenter. Even if concocted by Mr. Wen’s admirers, the report reveals a shift away from the prime minister’s persona as a vacillating, avuncular bureaucrat.

According to the account — which has been ricocheting by text message for days — Mr. Wen screamed on the phone to a general, who, under Beijing’s pecking order, does not answer to the prime minister. “I don’t care what you do,” Mr. Wen reportedly yelled, his face drenched in rain. “I just want 100,000 people saved. This is my order.”

Then, according to the story, he slammed the phone down.

Huang Yuanxi contributed research from Beijing.

A version of this news analysis appears in print on , on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: In Quake, Apotheosis Of Premier ‘Grandpa’. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe